


Fixed

by Molly



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dark, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-04
Updated: 2008-04-04
Packaged: 2017-10-02 07:52:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Molly/pseuds/Molly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is not my usual fare. I would thank luzdeestrellas for the beta, but her most constructive comment was "meep", and after that she hid under her bed. So...</p>
    </blockquote>





	Fixed

**Author's Note:**

> This is not my usual fare. I would thank luzdeestrellas for the beta, but her most constructive comment was "meep", and after that she hid under her bed. So...

Dean didn't tell his brother about the dream.

At the start, it just didn't seem to mean anything. Dean wasn't any stranger to fucked up dreams. He'd learned early on to stay quiet when they woke him up in the night -- at first because Dad told him there wasn't anything to be afraid of in the dark, later because Dad told him that there _was_. He had two reasons by then; the other was that yelling out always woke Sam up. He was a bitch to get back to sleep when he was a baby, and Dad never woke up when he cried. Never as fast as Dean did, anyway.

When Dean first came awake in the middle of it, woke up enough to remember, he knew it wasn't the first time the dream had come. There was a thread in it, a plot he could track from scene to scene and a looming panic as things unfolded just the way he knew they would (just the way they always had before) no matter what he did. There was a wall between his body and his will in the dream, and he watched himself do the same fatal nothing with dread clawing in his throat and the inevitable climax pushing closer with every act. He couldn't break through (he never could break through) and it wouldn't _stop_, it wouldn't change, and it was unbearable so he woke up with it in his mouth, his ears, his eyes, the smell of blood and smoke hanging heavy and impossible in the air around him. He choked, and clutched at the blankets and sheets that covered him with fingers curved into talons.

He could feel the bed against his back and the floor beneath, the ground, the turning planet; for a second he thought he could feel it all _spin_, and he held on because he couldn't breathe and the world wouldn't stop, none of it would stop. He held on because the strong, thick bones of Sam's hands were in his eyes and in his head, hands that flexed and curved and _reached_, covered with dust and bile and blood, and if they touched him, if they _touched_ him, the thing in his throat would rip free and he thought it was a scream and he thought if he started, he'd never be able to stop.

The first time was bad. Most times after that, it was worse. By morning, he rarely remembered why sleep had left him more tired than the day's work, or why Sam's clear eyes and quick smile made his heart catch and race with gratitude and relief. When he did remember, he didn't tell Sam because it was crazy, road-crazy, hunt-crazy, too many miles and too many kills wrapped up with pain meds and a drifter's diet. And then later, when he always remembered, he thought it was Hell-sent, some fucked up clause in his contract. Some fiery fine print that said maybe he got to keep his year topside, but that didn't mean the bad guys couldn't kick off the festivities a few months early.

Whatever it was, whatever he said or didn't say, Dean didn't believe in it. He didn't flinch when Sam touched him and he didn't hold back from touching Sam. He didn't stop meeting Sam's eyes, he didn't start watching his own back, he didn't stop falling asleep first and waking up last. He didn't stop sleeping between Sam and the dark. That was his place; this was his brother; these were the ways they were. He didn't change, not even when Sam started to. He didn't believe it, didn't think about it, didn't connect it to whatever was going slowly, subtly wrong in the shotgun seat beside him, day by day.

He didn't believe in it. But later, when he could see the last act coming and could sometimes watch himself blindly letting it come; when the memory of Sam's clean hands made his gut churn with desperate grief and longing; when Sam's bed was empty and untouched, and everything good was gone, and Sam gone with it -- when he'd come all the way to the end, that was what Dean thought about. The dread, the wall, smoke. The dust and blood.

Even when they started living it, Dean never told his brother about the dream.


End file.
